You're Giving Me a Heart Attack

The other day the mother of my daughter Lucia’s friend Jane called me. I don’t know her. We’ve said hello at a soccer game and texted a few times to coordinate where the girls are sleeping over on the weekend, but we’re not really friends.

I miss the days when I knew the parents of Lucia’s friends. I miss dropping her off and picking her up; coming inside to say hello or goodbye. Once Lucia started high school the parental meet and greet fizzled out. The kids were more independent. They made plans on their own — more informing the parents than making a plan with our help.

I’m used to it now but often on the weekends when Lucia is sleeping at a friend’s house I worry. When Jane’s mother called me the other day, I was surprised. When I picked up the call, I asked right away, “Is everything okay?”

“Well, ah,” she said, “Jane isn’t answering my calls and Jane’s friend Mary called to tell me that Jane’s car broke down. I don’t know why Jane isn’t calling me herself. I keep trying her and she isn’t picking up.”

I wondered too. There was no school the next day and I knew the girls had gone to soccer practice and were then going to go to a party. They had been hanging out at my house just a few hours before the call.

“Let me call Lucia,” I said, “They were just here and maybe she’ll answer her phone.” 

After a few attempts, I reached Lucia. She breathlessly answered the phone, “Mom, did you hear?” and proceeded to detail a story about how Jane’s car had died in the middle of an intersection and they were stranded. She told me how a man stopped to help them, jumping Jane’s car long enough to get to their Mary’s house. But just as they were pulling in to park, Jane’s car died again and they’d had to push the car another block to get it into a parking spot.

They were okay. Lucia told me that Jane was, at that moment, also on the phone with her mother.

I called Jane’s mother back to check in. Her voice was distracted and far away. I felt for her. I’ve been where she was in that moment. She was in the aftermath of intense worry. Behind the frustration and anger of not being able to reach her daughter, she had been experiencing a crushing maternal fear.

A few years ago Lucia didn’t answer her phone for hours while she was at a Halloween party. The images that went through my head — abduction, date rape, drowning, car accident, passed out from a head injury, alcohol or drug overdose — overwhelmed me. The inside of my head was like a boxing match of terrible possibilities. 

These catastrophic visions were all taking up space in my brain, occupying the airwaves so the most terrible thought of all — that my daughter was gone — couldn’t get through. 

It is the greatest fear, the one that is always there. That my child will somehow no longer be my child. That something horrible will happen when she is away from me and I will never see her again. It’s extreme worry, intense anxiety, yet I feel like it is totally normal. It’s what I imagined Jane’s mother was experiencing when she couldn’t reach her daughter.

My daughter is a confident, competent, independent young woman, and most of the time I feel like she is okay. I trust that, in most situations, she is going to be fine. But every once in a while that deep fear of the worst emerges. In those moments, the possibility that everything could go horribly, dreadfully wrong takes over. It’s like a mini heart attack — fluttering in my gut, clenching in my chest, and pressure behind my eyes. 

When the moment of panic is over, after I’ve confirmed that all is well with my daughter, there is still the residue from the experience. I feel drained, exhausted, raw with the emotion of almost losing her. In less than two years Lucia will be away at college; she will be far more out of touch than she is now. I’ll have zero control over her whereabouts or whether she contacts me to check-in. This time right now is preparing me for that more profound letting go.

Lucia is very good about staying in touch and responding if I reach out to her by text. But I’m also way better and letting her go a little bit further, for a little bit longer. I am building my threshold for being out of touch with her and letting her life be a little bit more of a mystery to me. I’m excited about her future and I know that from here on out most of her adventures will be without me. She’s ready for this next chapter and I have to be ready too. 

I notice a difference in my level of worry from years past. I don’t suffer the parade of terrible possibilities like I used to when I didn’t know Lucia’s whereabouts. But I still have moments. I know when Lucia is away at college I’ll still have little mini-heart attacks or worry. I imagine even when she’s fully launched, maybe even with her own family, I’ll have periodic heart-stopping worries from time to time. I don’t expect that feeling will ever fully go away. It’s just part of being a mother. 

My Daughter Can Save Herself

 

Last night I dreamed that I was on a beautiful island somewhere in Tahiti. I was down on the beach which somehow was a level below the area where the hotel was. I felt like it was odd but, like so many times in my life, I just accepted it and enjoyed the beach. A woman came out of the very clear water holding a gigantic frog and gathered the attention of people on the beach, myself included.

As we all walked towards the watermelon-sized slippery, brown, and yellow-spotted creature I noticed in my peripheral vision a fog of gray coming down from above. At first, I thought it was fog but then I realized it was a very light falling of sand. Before I could connect the dots, my intuition told me to run. I ran to the right, towards the water. I could hear screaming and feel the rumble of the sand crashing all around me. In my dream, I was with my daughter and a few friends; I hoped they were safe but I had no idea where they were or how they would manage this catastrophe.

The next segment of my dream had me on an electric bike riding on an island road somewhere away from the beach. At some point, I realized that I needed to find my daughter so I turned around. I expected to see people panicking around me but everyone seemed normal. There were bikers and drivers and walkers on the road with me and everyone seemed content. No one was panicking like me.

At some point on my electric bike ride, I realized that I could go much faster and I would be able to get back to the beach, and to my daughter, much faster. I don’t like speed. I don’t like feeling out of control, so when my bike got too fast I tried to break. My brakes didn’t work so I put my feet on the road which had turned into orange clay. I dug my heels into the earth to slow my bike down and as I did my wallet flew out of the bike basket into a water-filled ravine. Now I was really in trouble.

I spoke to a man sitting by the ravine and he pointed to my wallet. It was way down and there was no way for me to retrieve it. The man seemed happy though and, laughing, he assured me that no one else would be able to get my license and identification because my wallet was so far down.

I got back on my bike and rode in the direction of our hotel. Now I was really worried about my daughter. Even though she’s sixteen, nearly an adult, I still worry about her. I will always worry about her. In my dream, I worried as I do in my waking life. Was she buried in sand? Frightened? Lost? Dead?

As I rode my bike, I passed through a town and slowed down. I realized that somehow through the chaos I still had my phone. I stopped my bike and pulled it out to call my daughter. I dialed and, as I waited, I looked to my right. There, sitting on a bench in a navy blue sweatshirt with wet, sandy hair was my daughter. I watched her reach down into her bag to answer her phone.

At the moment that she answered her phone she looked at me. We were so surprised, relieved, and happy to see each other. My daughter was okay. She’d survived. In my dream, I was overwrought with emotion to see her alive. But also, in my dream state, as I looked at my daughter sitting on the bench, I saw a competent, capable almost-adult, not a helpless, lost, child on the beach. While I ran in one direction during the landslide, she had run in another, making her own decision that resulted in her safety and survival.

Being a mother is a lifetime of wonder and worry. This week my daughter will be seventeen, almost an adult. Last week when I was out of town she stayed by herself for two nights. I was so worried. I worried someone would break into the house. I worried she would have a party. I worried someone would take advantage of her being alone. But she was okay. She was great. She loved it!

My daughter has a job. She drives a car. She navigates a whole world of school, friends, relationships, and struggles that are completely outside of me.

My dream is telling me, reminding me, that my daughter is okay; that all signs point to the fact that she will continue to be okay. That long electric bike ride out of town and back again is a metaphor for my worry. It symbolizes my fear that my daughter will not be okay in the big, bad world.

In my dream, my daughter survived. And in reality, she is surviving too. She is thriving.

A friend of mine says that her mother’s love language is worry. I think it might be mine too. But I would like it not to be. In my dream, in that moment where I saw my daughter on the bench, okay and alive, plotting her next move — where to go, what to do — I experienced a sense of wonder and awe.

Last night at dinner, after a cold, wet, soccer game in the rain, my daughter rattled on about a new club she’d joined at school, about the birthday dinner she was planning with her friends, about her plans to get more hours at work. Then we all did a crossword puzzle together. Dinner doesn’t always happen like this. Often my daughter barely speaks and when dinner is over she goes to her room.

But last night was one of those rare nights where my daughter let us see her in all her glory. She’s okay. I don’t need to worry so much. If there is a landslide, or a car accident, or a heartbreak, or an earthquake, I am not going to be the one to save my daughter. She’s going to save herself.